Virgin Orbit to fly 11 satellites for NASA on second orbital launch demo later this year
https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/03/virgin-orbit-to-fly-11-satellites-for-nasa-on-second-orbital-launch-demo-later-this-year/
Virgin Orbit’s first attempt at an orbital launch demo may not have gone entirely to plan (the LauncherOne rocket released as planned but its flight was cut short just after that), but it has booked a payload for its next try – 11 science satellites selected by NASA and primarily designed and built by U.S. universities. Virgin says that it will fly this second launch demo, complete with its cargo, sometime “before the end of the year.”
After the first attempt was cut short prior to the planned conclusion of the rocket, which was aiming to accomplish a more sustained flight of the empty LauncherOne rocket, potentially even to orbital altitude, the Virgin Orbit team conducted a comprehensive investigation of the cause of the issue encountered. That investigation is now nearly complete, the company says, and in a blog cost they note the cause of the mission-ending failure – a broken high-pressure line that is supplies LauncherOne’s rocket engine with liquid oxygen, a required component for the combustion that drives thrust.